Abstract
Solar-driven interfacial desalination has been emerged as a promising water treatment technology to generate drinkable water out of seawater. The accumulated salt crystals generated from seawater, however, have adverse effects on solar-driven interfacial evaporation. In this work, we prepared a salt-rejecting reduced graphene oxide (rGO) foam by depositing rGO particles on a hydrophilic melamine foam for solar desalination. Benefitting from the intrinsic porous microstructure and hydrophilicity, the rGO-coated melamine foam has sufficient wettability to draw water to the evaporation region, leading to rapid replenishment of water and simultaneously avoiding salt precipitation. Based on the rGO-coated melamine foam, the interfacial evaporation system can achieve a steady-state evaporation efficiency of 89.6% under a solar flux of 1 kW m−2 and has good durability under one sun over 12 h. With the high solar-to-thermal conversion efficiency and excellent long-term stability, this interfacial evaporation system exhibits the potential of commercial seawater desalination.Graphic abstract
Highlights
Nowadays, the global energy crisis and water shortage have become major threats to the sustainable development of human society [1, 2]
The reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-coated melamine foam is localized in the middle and its outside is wrapped by a layer of polyethylene (PE) foam to construct a self-floating interfacial evaporation system
The porous structure of the rGO-coated melamine foam allowed the generated vapor to escape into the environment and facilitated solar light capturing, thereby improving solar-to-thermal conversion efficiency
Summary
The global energy crisis and water shortage have become major threats to the sustainable development of human society [1, 2]. We demonstrate a salt-rejecting, highly efficient solar absorption and fast thermal response reduced graphene oxide (rGO) foam for solar-driven interfacial desalination under low-flux solar illumination. A solar-driven interfacial desalination device was designed and fabricated by integrating the rGO-coated melamine foam into a commercial solar still, which had a solar-to-water conversion efficiency of 56.4% under 1 sun illumination.
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